Red Army = most effective force !

[Listy]

Marek_Tucan said:
No evidence needed, it's as self-evident as the fact T-34 was best tank of WWII and Sherman was just a total failure

**grumble mutter grumble**

You trying to start a fight with me old fruit?

[Smersh]

I played a 1969 battle against the chinese as the soviet union, and I had the same thing happen to me. for my 2 bmp comapanies, the chinese had bought 3-4 mech companies. some chinese units would literally dismount 50m from my own dismounted infantry, after my units ran out of return fire shots.

[Mobhack]

If you plan to use special farces, then these are best used in a scenario, and not a generated battle.

Generated battles are for normal line forces meeting normal line forces.


Special farces (SAS, Spetznatz and so on) are provided as a tool for the scenario designer. They don't appear on the normal battlefield (or if they do, they belong to the army-level commanders, and not you as "Lt Col Regular Guy"

The scenario designer can then plan a situation where the eliteness of the special farces can be balanced by the setup (lack of time and so on and so forth).

Cheers
Andy

[Nightblade]

If you buy yourself the units/equipment the AI will use against your army, you can easily solve this problem and then create a possible "to win" or "to lose" battle according to the armies setup you decide.

This way, sf or other kind of very expensive units can be very well used in generated battles without a problem and prevent the frustration such 100 vs 1 situation usually lead into when the AI buy very cheap units in nearly invicincible amount.

[Smersh]

Doing that means no suprises. although, I've done that occiasonly to give the ai, in my mind, more realistic buys.

[Sarunas]

I wish this War Nerd guy posted on this furum more. A really funny article:

http://www.exile.ru/2005-April-08/war_nerd.html

If you're anything like me, you probably spent a lot of the 80s imagining what would happen if the big NATO-Warsaw Pact war in Central Europe came along. It's still hard for me to believe sometimes that the whole showdown just faded away without a shot fired.

Back in Reagan's day, everybody was dreaming about High Noon at the Fulda Gap, and reading what-if novels like The Third World War, by a British general, John Hackett, or Clancy's Red Storm Rising. (By the way, Hackett's book is still the best of the lot, if you ask me. He's got a bigger picture, covering everything from South Africa to the NW Atlantic, and he doesn't shy away from harsh stuff like English cities being wiped out in a Soviet first strike. Red Storm Rising is a fun, fast read but like I've said before, I'm not much of a Clancy fan. He's a hardware geek, no grasp of strategy, and a lying pig to boot.)

After the Soviets went out of business, I thought we'd get some really solid info on what the Warsaw Pact forces had planned, especially what their nuke and irregular forces (SpetzNaz teams) had in mind in the way of first strike and sabotage. Probably "we" did, meaning the intel community. But whatever they got, they didn't pass along much of it to us civilians out there.

Well, a reader named Dima Sverin just sent me a (translated) interview with ex-Soviet general Matvey Burlakov, the last commander of the Soviet Southern and Western Forces, HQ'd in Hungary. Burlakov was a "Colonel-General," a very, very high rank, and in this interview with a Russian newspaper he pretty much spills all, as far as I can tell.

There's some great stuff. In fact he sounds like a great old guy. I've heard from some guys who've worked with the Russian officer corps that they're pretty cool guys, mostly, ready to drink you under the table and talk strategy non-stop while you're lying there. The only problem is if you're a Russian conscript-then officers don't seem so cool anymore, which might explain why the conscripts go AWOL every week in Russia, shooting up half their barracks before being hunted down themselves.

The first thing you notice about Burlakov's interview is how much the Soviets relied on tanks. When he talks about the war, the way it could've happened, he talks tanks: "The height of the Cold War was the early 1980s. All they [the Soviet leaders] had to do was give the signal and everything would have gone off. Everything was battle-ready. The shells were in the tanks. They just had to be loaded and fired."

If you get the impression the General was pretty confident about his chances, you're right. He says if the Soviet leaders had just given the word, "We would have burned and destroyed everything they [NATO] had."

After he says that, it's like Burlakov gets a little nervous that he might be sounding too aggressive, because he adds, "I mean military targets, not civilians."

Now that bit, about how they wouldn't have targeted civilians, is classic bull****. A huge conventional war in Germany would have killed millions of civilians, no matter how you war-gamed it. But I'm inclined to believe the old general when he says the Soviet tank armies would've kicked ***. The NATO forces were in a hopeless deployment: jammed into West Germany, an indefensible strip of heavily-populated territory. No strategic depth available, meaning the advantage was with whoever struck first. Once the population realized the Russians were coming, every Beemer and Merc in Germany would have hit the roads, those same roads our tanks were supposed to use. In that chaos, the Bundeswehr would have dissolved into a bunch of terrified locals looking for their families.

Burlakov is not too respectful, to put it mildly, about the West German military: "We had a sea of tanks on the [Soviet] Western Group. Three tank armies! And what did the [West] Germans have? The [German] workweek ends Friday and then you wouldn't find anyone, not a minister or a soldier. Just guards. By the time they realized what was happening, we would have burned up their tanks and looted their armories."

There you see it again, that obsession with tanks. The conventional wisdom right now is that the MBT's day is ending, but luckily we never saw what would happen if those three tank armies had poured through the Fulda Gap on some fine Sunday morning. (You definitely get the feeling that the plan involved attacking on a weekend, don't you?) With Soviet soldiers at the controls, and Soviet air support limiting USAF missions, a T-72 would have been a totally different machine from the Arab-crewed junkers littering the Middle East.

Of course it all depended on striking first. So would the Soviet Army have sucker-punched us? Burlakov says, "Of course! What else? Wait for them to strike us?"

The journalist asks again, like just to make sure: "We [the Soviets] would have struck first?" and the General says again, "Of course!"

And he makes it real clear that he's not just talking about conventional first strikes. The interviewer says, "But [Soviet] Foreign Minister Gromyko said that the USSR would not use nuclear weapons first!"

I love Burlakov's answer: "He said one thing and we [the Soviet staff] thought another. We are the ones responsible for wars."

One of the funnier bits is Burlakov explaining what R&R meant for Soviet soldiers serving in Socialist Hungary. As some of you guys probably know, the Soviet Army (and the Russian one now) don't exactly believe in coddling their soldiers. No unions like the Dutch allow, no PX and Mickey D's like we give them. By all accounts, being a private in a Russian army is a lot like being in maximum security, only the food isn't as good. Burlakov sounds like he's almost proud of the way he kept his cannon fodder under control: "We practically didn't let them [Soviet soldiers] into the towns in Hungary. A tour of Budapest and then back to the barracks! We were afraid...our soldiers might have done something bad."

I'm not sure what "something bad" means but since I've heard that Soviet recruits often went months without even seeing a woman, I can imagine. Maybe somebody should send a copy of that policy to the US commander on Okinawa. Might solve some of our PR problems with the locals.

As long as he's talking about the Soviet war plan, Burlakov is downright cheery. But when the interviewer starts making him describe how it all fell apart after Gorbachev took over, he starts sounding like a bitter old man.

He's still so shocked at Gorbachev's withdrawal of Soviet forces from Europe that he says somebody was drugging Gorbachev: "They [I have no idea who he means by 'they'] fed him something, they brought him a cup of something like tea with milk..." Of course that sounds like paranoid crap, but you can see why Burlakov would have to invent a story like that to explain Gorbachev's backdown. In fact Burlakov seems to be aware that he needs to invent a "they" and a spiked tea, because nothing else makes sense for why Gorbachev up and surrendered the way he did.

Poor old Burlakov, watching his baby, this incredible "sea of tanks," just rot away because the politicians won't give the order to attack. It happens to most generals; it's a lucky one who ever gets to use the army he helped build. Watching it all crumble without a fight-that's gotta be one of the roughest ways for a general to end his career.

I mean obviously it's a GOOD thing, in the long run, that the nuke Super Bowl everybody was planning for didn't happen. I understand that. But it's gotta be tough to spend your whole life planning the one big push, and then, when you're sure you could win and you're just waiting for the green flag, something goes wrong on the home front, and suddenly your sea of tanks is effectively destroyed as a war-fighting force. Without firing a shot.

That's where you see how generals don't actually have that much power after all. Burlakov may woof, talking about how "we," the generals and not the pols, "are responsible for war." But his pitiful end shows how not true that is. Like he says, "everything was ready." But without somebody to give that green light, the best tank is just scrap metal.

[Siddhi]

a perspective from a neutral country "green slime"

reg. "russian tanks rusting outside"
never heard of such a thing. most tank barracks in the world have a bunch of old tanks standing around in a lot for basic training purposes, or even simply as a memorial. the idea that a category A or B unit, which spent all of their recruits time in mind-boggling "make work" tasks, would let their critical combat equipment go to hell is just wrong. until the mid 1980s, where corruption/embezelement of supplies as well as "moonlighting" of NCOs became an increasing problem, soviet and some WP (especially GDR ans CSSR) readyness was first rate, better in our view then most NATO equipment.

- tank training for soviet and cssr was absolutly first rate, and superior to many NATO countries, especially in gunnery and formation keeping (battle drill). given the two-year enlistment periods common nearly no tanker trained in one tank and was expected to fight in another, although o/c this is not valid for C formations whose expected mob time included training with "new" equipment. B-formations still had refresher courses and were familiar with their equipment

- "warsaw pact advancing along two roads" i have no idea what that is supposed to mean. norway, perhaps, and wouldn't have that been 1 road unless they crossed finland?

- "logistics, etc." this is the biggest myth of all - that soviet logistics was a nightmare or a mess. o/c after 1985 everything slowly went downhill, but the soviets beforehand were true masters of the art - more importantly, they were ther first to employ "computurised" logistic systems - basically big calculators - first at front then at army level, from 1975 onwards. these systems were so advanced they AUTOMATICALLY could issue (print orders ready for signing or teletype reley) movement and priority orders on supply coloums and MSRs. the fact that they were less "flexible" then NATO is completly irrelevant - if you do not resupply a regiment but simply pull it from the line and put in another you do not need flexibility. this approach was brilliant as while they knew it cut combat capability in some ways (lack of experienced NCOs, commanders, etc.) in allowed the "same" factors to be considered fresh each time in the battle management computers, i.e. they knew exactly what equipment would be how worn out over how much time, and could therefore pre-order supplies, unlike the NATO system, which was "pull" rather then "push". finally the WP has a defence mobilisation scheme that only countries such as norway, austria and sweden have - every vehicle could be commandered for the front - effectivly the entire country could go to "war industy" at the flip of switch.

- "small-unit inflexibility" who cares? when the vast majority of your engagements are going to be regiment-size, that is what you train for. that they are "set-piece actions" is only marginally negative, if at all, if it is a true combined arms assault. that fire strikes "could not be adjusted" or similar is complete nonsense. battilion-sized task groups could immidetly form after breaking the line and were perfectly able to fullfill their main mission - push deep and disrupt.

i can't really comment on technical/ equipment matters as others prolly know more about it here, except for one minor detail: the older t-72 varaints vibrated so much that crews routinely fell asleep on the march and would roll of the roads - none combat attrition rate for an tank regiment road march was many times higher then for nato equiviliant (brigade without supply arm).

between 1975-85 the WP would have given NATO a serious challange, and depending on circs, it would have been a tight thing. given that the most likely "threat of war" scenario was due to Operation RYAN (look it up if you don't know it) in the 1982-83/84 timeframe i think everyone in the west should be a lot more thankfull that it never happened.

[narwan]

Siddhi said:
- "logistics, etc." this is the biggest myth of all - that soviet logistics was a nightmare or a mess. o/c after 1985 everything slowly went downhill, but the soviets beforehand were true masters of the art - more importantly, they were ther first to employ "computurised" logistic systems - basically big calculators - first at front then at army level, from 1975 onwards. these systems were so advanced they AUTOMATICALLY could issue (print orders ready for signing or teletype reley) movement and priority orders on supply coloums and MSRs. the fact that they were less "flexible" then NATO is completly irrelevant - if you do not resupply a regiment but simply pull it from the line and put in another you do not need flexibility. this approach was brilliant as while they knew it cut combat capability in some ways (lack of experienced NCOs, commanders, etc.) in allowed the "same" factors to be considered fresh each time in the battle management computers, i.e. they knew exactly what equipment would be how worn out over how much time, and could therefore pre-order supplies, unlike the NATO system, which was "pull" rather then "push". finally the WP has a defence mobilisation scheme that only countries such as norway, austria and sweden have - every vehicle could be commandered for the front - effectivly the entire country could go to "war industy" at the flip of switch.

Just to be clear, I never said nor intended to say that soviet logistics was a mess. What I pointed out was the limitations of implementing the whole logistics oepration. You can have a finely tuned organisation, in the end it's the road space and other infrastructure that determine how much of and how well you can implement your organisation.

A historical case in point is the german advance in ww1 in august of '14. It is often said that the germans would have won if they had had those divisions there in the west of france that they had send to the eastern front to face the russians instead. What is forgotten is that there was literally no room for those divisions. A german infantry division on the march through belgium and france needed an awful lot of road space. So much that often the end of the column ended a days advance more or less on the same positions that the leading units had started of from that morning. The roads in belgium (the east of belgium being the bottleneck) and france were already packed with moving columns of troops and supplies (of which there were often shortages due to the congestion of the roads).
From a battlefield point of view those additional divisions could have made all the difference, from a logistical viewpoint it made more sense to send them elsewhere.

While I don't debate the existence of a complex supply system, or the abundance of bridging equipment and engineers, nor the waterfording capabilities of many soviet AFV's, what I do debate is their ability to advance all those troops, their supplies and reinforcements along the limited infrastructure available. This is NOT just about bridges, what some people seem to think. You can just as easily take out large sections of roads, crossroads etc with modern engineer and demolition equipment so as to make them unusable (as roads etc) for quite some time. Which is what matters, time. Every minute and hour lost means more pile up of vehicles and the more they pile up the harder it becomes to 'un-pile' them. You might say, well they can just go around it right? Tracked vehicles and all terrain wheeled vehicles can, but trucks will quickly become stuck (all that traffic going over non hardened ground will soon turn it into ploughed fields, hard to croos with trucks). So as soon as you have column of trucks stuck/slowed, everything behind it, including tracked and AT wheeled will get stuck in the traffic jam too.

It's simply a matter of the amount of traffic density that the exisitng infrastructure could handle, then add deliberate delays and blockings and you'll come to what is realistically possible in terms of nr of manouvre units and supply chain. Add in doctrine (fast or slow advance, high or low ammo expenditure (artillery especially) etc, etc) and the number gets higher or lower, basically the faster you want to advance, the lower the nr of troops.

In my opinion, assuming a reasonable disruption by NATO, a WP advance would have stalled quite quickly after initial succes.

Narwan

[Smersh]

In my opinion, assuming a reasonable disruption by NATO, a WP advance would have stalled quite quickly after initial succes.

How big would the initial success be, How much territory could have been occupied in that golden period?

[Marek_Tucan]

Formation keeping isn't much worth in combat Syrians on Golans in 1973 were keeping formations pretty well AFAIK, made them just good targets

To put Czechoslovakian war readiness a bit into perspective, my father served a long time as active duty officer in Signal corps. In wartime, each of their stations was supposed to have a Motor Rifle company or at the very least platoon for defense.

Guess how many times they did actually train it in the 15 years he spent with the Signals.

Another great anecdote from a joint training with the Rooskies. Russian tank brigade was to attack alongside our Mototr Rifle Brigade. True the Russians were showing the battle drill OK (ie they were driving in nice tight formations that would make any A-10 pilot scream with joy) but atleast their command post (where my father was providing comms for liaison officer) was in quickly built bunker with a good view on the battlefield and objective. Czechoslovakian CP was a big white tent with another big white tent alongside where waiters in smokings were serving drinks.
Our defense ministers were all too often interested in such important issues like forbidding the officers to wear any other combat boots than the officer's (these got shallower patterns on their soles so generally sucked in mud etc.) and the thing was pursued with more vigour than any combat training - my father was one of two officers of his unit who circumvented this by having standard soldier's boot soles mated with their oficer's boots - he said he could've laughed his ...erm, bottom off when, while climbing a rather steep and muddy slope in autumn, they were the only two who managed to do it without repeatedly falling face-down into mud.

And there were many other similar cases. So while the unit's training might be good, training of cooperation wasn't as good and the higher echelons weren't much prepared to fight a war, they were more interested in playing soldiers.

EDIT: Dunno how the tank gunnery training looked like, but rifle training was performed (atleast with father's unit) scarcely and with a very limited ammo allowance - this was being circumvented by various tradeoffs of insignia and other souvenirs with Russian troops who had very loose regulations in this field and had generally as many free rounds as they wanted. Still, there were some "active" higher officers who were trying to uncover such mischiefous wrongdoings and make sure the soldiers didn't fire more than the official allowance.
Also, during one gunnery training session (organised in a military area Milovice IIRC) my father got an invitation from their fellow Soviet Signal unit and contrary to our practise (where Signal troops were training only with a rifle and officers also with pistols), they had everything from pistol up to RPG training fires so my father spent a happy afternoon there trying out AK-74, PKM and RPG. He was invited also for the next day when MANPADS training was to take place but unfortunately they were parting too soon so he wasn't able to get there.